Critical Essay by Clayton G. MacKenzie

In the following essay, MacKenzie examines how the classical and biblical mythic references in the Henry VI plays reflect and subvert the heroic ideals of English mythology.

To the Elizabethan translator Philemon Holland, mythology is “a fabulous Narration: or the delivery of matters by way of fables and tales”1 and mythologers are those who expound such “Morall Tales.”2 Neither the First Tetralogy nor its author wholly correspond to either definition. The plays, as mythology, fall short of a “fabulous Narration,” and the rôle of Shakespeare, as mythologer, is not focused exclusively on ethical matters: